September 30, 2013

The most famous line used by American humorist Will Rogers when he poked fun at the latest antics of politicians or commented on other recent news stories was “Well, all I know is what I read in the papers.”

Many books and websites cite the September 30, 1923 edition of The New York Times as the source of this quip. It did appear on that date in a newspaper column Rogers wrote and it is certainly his most famous use in print.

However, Rogers actually began using the quip years earlier in his live stage performances.

It was published in The New York Times and eventually in 600 other daily and weekly newspapers.

Rogers’ column was like a written version of his stage show monologues. He would note recent items in the news, then make slyly witty remarks about them.

His first use of the “all I know...” catchphrase in “Slipping the Lariat Over” was in his September 30, 1923 column — which is why that date is cited by so many books and websites.

In that week’s column, Rogers commented on news stories which had speculated that a recent earthquake in Japan was the cause of an accidental grounding of U.S. Navy ships near New York City and various other unusual events.

Rogers wrote in his usual dry, folksy manner:

“Well, all I know is what I read in the Papers. That Japanese Earthquake, in addition to being the greatest calamity in the history of the World, even at the time that it happened, has, according to Newspapers and Experts, not reaped half of its destruction yet. Every day something happens and we don’t know exactly just what it is, and it will turn out in the Morning Paper to be the Earthquake in Japan that caused it. We lost 7 Self Destroyers on the rocks just above here the other day. People thought at first that it might have been a Fog, but it wasn’t; it was the earthquake in Japan.”

Later in that column Rogers humorously praised fighter Luis Firpo for not blaming his defeat in a recent boxing match on the earthquake in Japan.

He added:

“I read where Will Hays went to Europe with Ambassador Harvey [the US ambassador to Great Britain]. Now I don’t know if that was Politics or the Earthquake — either one is equally destructive.”

Rogers went on to use “all I know is what I read in the papers,” with minor variations, in many following “Slipping the Lariat Over” columns.

His column was hugely popular and he continued writing it until his tragic death in a plane crash in 1935.

Rogers once said about the success of his newspaper column:

“When I first started out to write and misspelled a few words, people said I was plain ignorant. But when I got all the words wrong, they declared I was a humorist.”

And, in a way, it epitomizes Kerouac’s rejection of mid-Twentieth Century, middle-class mores in favor of a wilder, non-conformist approach to life:

“They danced down the streets like dingledodies, and I shambled after as I’ve been doing all my life after people who interest me, because the only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars and in the middle you see the blue centerlight pop and everybody goes ‛Awww!’”

In fact, he coined that term, according to his friend and fellow Beat writer John Clellon Holmes and Kerouac himself.

Holmes popularized the term “Beat Generation” in magazine articles and books he wrote in the 1950s. But he credited it to Kerouac.

Kerouac later confirmed that it was his creation. In an interview published in the June 1959 issue of Playboy magazine, he recalled:

“Holmes and I were sitting around trying to think up the meaning of the Lost Generation’s subsequent existentialism. And I said, ‘You know, this is really a beat generation,’ and he leapt up and said, ‘That’s it, that’s right!’”

On September 5, 1957, the day On the Road was officially released, a review of the novel appeared in the New York Times. It was written by critic Gilbert Millstein, who’d received an advance copy.

He predicted:

“Just as, more than any other novel of the Twenties,The Sun Also Rises came to be regarded as the testament of the Lost Generation, so it seems certain that On The Road will come to be known as that of the Beat Generation.”

Millstein turned out to be right.

On the Road has achieved immense and long-lasting fame. Dozens of editions have been published over the decades, in dozens of different languages.

Millions of people have read about and been inspired by Kerouac’s depiction of the “mad ones” who “burn, burn, burn like fabulous yellow roman candles.”

Unfortunately, Kerouac burned himself out early, in an ending that was not fabulous.

After years of heavy alcoholism, he died at the age of 47 in 1969, from internal hemorrhaging caused by cirrhosis of the liver.

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After retiring from forty years of work in the realm of public policy and politics, I now write three blogs (ThisDayinQuotes.com, QuoteCounterquote.com and MensPulpMags.com) and co-edit the Men's Adventure Library series of books published by New Texture (www.NewTexture.com). Those books — on Amazon here > bit.ly/RobertDeis — feature stories and artwork from my collection of more than 5,000 vintage men's pulp adventure magazines. I live near Key West with my beautiful wife, Barbara Jo, and our three dogs and five cats